Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Conspectus of Hegel’s BookLectures On the Historyof Philosophy:

Volume XV. Volume III Of The History Of Philosophy(The End Of Greek Philosophy, Medievaland Modern Philosophy up to Schelling, pp. 1-692)

Written:1915Source:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th Edition, Moscow, 1976,Volume 38, pp. 301-302Publisher:Progress PublishersFirst Published:1930 inLenin Miscellany XIITranslated:Clemence DuttEdited:Stewart SmithTranscription & Markup:Kevin GoinsPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive (2008).You may freely copy, distribute, display and 
	  perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. 
	  Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

Note that this document has undergone special formating to ensure that 
	Lenin’s sidenotes fit on the page, marking as best as possible 
	where they were located in the original manuscript.

...“The return to God....” (5),[2]“self-consciousness is absolute Essence”..., “theworld-spirit”... (7), “Christian religion”....(8)And amass of thin porridgeladled out about God.... (8-18)

But this philosophical idealism, open-ly, “seriously” leading to God, is morehonest than modern agnosticism withits hypocrisy and cowardice.

A. Philo—(about the time of the birth

of Christ), a Jewish savant, a mystic,“finds Plato present in Moses” (19),etc. The main point is “the knowl-edge of God” (21), etc. God is λόγοζ,[3]“the epitome of all Ideas,” “pure Be-ing” (22) (“according to Plato”)....(22) Ideas are “angels” (messengersof God).... (24) The sensuous world,however, “as with Plato” = ούχ όν[4]== not-Being. (25)

B. Cabbala,[5]theGnostics[6]——————

C. Alexandrian philosophy[7]—(= eclectic

ism) (=Platonists, Pythagoreans, Ari-stotelians). (33, 35)

Eclectics are either uncultured men, orcunning (die klugen Leute[8]—they take thegood from every system, but...

—they collect every good but do not have“consistency of thought, and consequentlythought itself.” (33)

They developed Plato....

“The Platonic universal, which is inthought, accordingly receives the significa-tion of being as such absolute essence”(33)....

[1]Neo-Platonists—followers of the mystical
	  philosophical doctrine, the basis of which wasPlato’sidealism. Neo-Platonism
	  (Plotinus was the head of this school) developed during the period from the
	  3rd to the 5th centuries and was a combination of theStoic,EpicureanandScepticaldoctrines 
	  with the philosophy of Plato andAristotle. The influence
	  of neo-Platonism was strong in the Middle Ages; it was expressed in the doctrines
	  of the leading medieval theologians and is also to be seen in certain trends
	  of modern bourgeois philosophy.

[2]Hegel,Werke,
	  Rd. XV, Berlin, 1836.—Ed.

[3]logos—Ed.

[4]non-existent—Ed.

[5]Cabbala—a medieval mystical religious
	  “doctrine” prevalent among the most fanatical followers of Judaism,
	  as well as among adherents of Christianity and Islam. The basic thought of
	  this doctrine is the symbolic interpretation of the Holy Scripture, whose
	  every word and number acquires special mystical importance in	the eyes of 
	  the Cabbalists.

[6]Gnostics—followers of mystical, 
	  religious-philosophical doctrines during the early centuries of our era. They
	  tried to unite Christian theology and various theses of Platonic, Pythagorean
	  and Stoic philosophy.

[7]Alexandrian philosophy—several philosophical
	  schools and trends that arose during the early centuries of our era in Alexandria,
	  Egypt. Their distinguishing feature was their attempt to unite Plato’s
	  and Aristotle’s philosophy and the mystical Eastern cults.

[8]clever people—Ed.

[9]This entry was made by Lenin in German on the back
	  cover of the notebook containing the conspectus of Hegel’s bookLectures
	  on the Philosophy of History.—Ed.

[10]Hegel,Werke, Bd. XIV, Berlin, 1833.—Ed.